Overlanding the World — Our Setup, Vehicles and What We Learned

# The Overlanding Setup Guide We Wish We'd Had

Overlanding looks effortless on social media. You see the dust-kissed Cruiser parked on a ridge, golden hour, nobody sweating. What you don't see is the six weeks we spent arguing about drawer configurations in our driveway in Perth, the two grand we spent on gear we eventually sold in Nairobi, or the four hours Pat spent lying in Zambian mud rewiring a dual battery system that a "professional" had bodged before we left. This guide is not aspirational content. It's the setup we actually run, what we ditched, what we'd do again, and the paperwork nobody explains properly until you're already crying at a border post.

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Choosing the Vehicle

We test-drove a Hilux, seriously considered a Defender 110, and talked ourselves in and out of both about a dozen times. The Hilux is everywhere, parts are cheap, mechanics in every town from Dodoma to Douala can fix one with a length of wire and a prayer. The Defender has its romantics — Pat was one of them — but find us a Series III in Kinshasa with a functioning transmission and we'll wait. In the end we landed on a Toyota 78-series Troopy with a pop-top, and then upgraded to the 79-series twin-cab platform-body before South America. The decision came down to three things: the 1VD-FTV turbo diesel's proven long-haul reliability, the global Toyota parts network, and the fact that the Troopy body gives you a full flat load floor without a permanent conversion eating your flexibility. The pop-top specifically was a Jerven-style canvas unit fitted by a local fabricator in Malaga before we shipped — not a brand name but built to a brief we controlled. If we did it again, we'd still buy a Troopy. We'd also buy it two years earlier and spend that time actually driving it.

[IMAGE: https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1494976388531-d1058494cdd8?w=1600&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop | Overland truck at sunset in Africa]

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Build Philosophy: Less Is More

We arrived in Cape Town in 2019 with a vehicle that weighed 3,800 kg fully loaded. We had a full galley kitchen welded to the rear, a 200 Ah lithium bank, a 100W shower system, a compressor, two spare tyres, a fold-out table, and enough cable ties to fence a paddock. By the time we reached Addis Ababa we had sold, given away or left beside the road: the galley kitchen (replaced with a drawer slide unit and a single-burner), the 200 Ah lithium (swapped for AGM — cheaper to replace locally if they fail), the compressor shower (replaced with a 10L Sun Shower), and approximately 40 kg of "emergency" gear we never touched.

The philosophy we landed on: build for your lowest-resource moment, not your most comfortable one. Design the system so that if a component fails in a country where the replacement doesn't exist, you can still operate. Redundancy beats luxury. Our current build is three slide-out drawers, one fridge slide, a water tank under the rear floor, and a sleep platform. The pop-top is the only indulgence we kept and we kept it because sleeping upright without whacking your head matters after month four.

What we removed and don't miss: the roof rack cargo basket (wind drag, weight, and the ratchet straps always came loose), the side awning (replaced with a 3×3 m tarp and two trekking poles — AUD $60 versus AUD $900), and the dual-output inverter (we charge laptops via a 12V–USB-C adapter now, done).

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Sleep System: Roof, Ground, or Interior

Rooftop tents are aspirational gear for overlanders who haven't yet been woken at 2 a.m. by a wind that wants to fold your tent in half. We ran a hard-shell RTT for eight months. We then converted to a full interior platform and haven't looked back. Interior sleeping in a Troopy with a pop-top is: faster to set up (two minutes), more secure (you're in a locked vehicle), warmer in altitude cold, and it keeps your sleeping gear dry regardless of what the sky is doing. The platform is a hinged 25 mm plywood sheet covered in camping foam and a fitted cotton cover. Cost us about AUD $400 in materials. We added a Therm-a-Rest under each sleeping mat for the cold desert nights in Namibia and the Bolivian altiplano.

If you're in a standard single or twin cab and interior sleeping isn't an option, go ground tent before RTT. Ground tents are cheaper, replaceable anywhere on earth, and if something goes wrong with the poles you fix it with a stick. RTTs are irreplaceable in most of the countries you'll be in.

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Power, Water, and the Fridge Situation

Power: We run a dual battery setup — a 100 Ah AGM starter battery and a 120 Ah AGM house battery. The isolation is managed by a Redarc BCDC1225D DC-DC charger with MPPT solar input. We have a 160W flexible panel on the roof. This runs the fridge, charges devices, and powers a small LED strip. We chose AGM over lithium deliberately: AGMs cost AUD $180–220 each, can be sourced from a truck stop in most African countries, and don't require a lithium-specific charger. In South America we replaced one battery in Cusco for the equivalent of AUD $150. That would have been a very different story with a lithium BMS failure in the same location.

Water: 60 L in an under-floor polyethylene tank with a 12V pump and a single tap at the rear. We carry two 20 L jerry cans as overflow, which we fill at fuel stations or guesthouses. We run a Sawyer Squeeze inline filter for drinking water when quality is uncertain. Total water capacity: 100 L. In the Sahara we wished we had more. In South America's Andean towns we rarely needed more than 40 L.

Fridge: 60 L Engel MT60, running on the house battery. We've had this fridge for six years. It has never failed us. It is not glamorous. It is the most reliable piece of gear we own. We keep it loaded no more than 80% and defrost every three weeks. On low-power days — cloudy weather, no driving — we turn it up to 6°C rather than 2°C and it draws less current. Do not buy a fridge for the brand story. Buy an Engel or an Iceco and maintain it.

[IMAGE: https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1520466809213-7b9a56adcd45?w=1600&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop | Overland gear laid out on vehicle tailgate]

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Cooking

We built a full slide-out kitchen with a two-burner stove, a spice rack, a cutting board that doubled as a splash guard, and a little shelf for cooking oil. It was genuinely lovely. It also weighed 18 kg, cost AUD $1,400 in fabrication, and when the drawer runner seized in a humid coastal town in Cameroon, Pat nearly lost a finger.

We now cook on a single Trangia 27 with a meths burner and a gas conversion top. Total weight: 820 g. We can cook a full meal — rice and curry, pasta, fried eggs, whatever — in 25 minutes. We carry a single 10-inch cast iron skillet which lives on the floor behind the passenger seat. That is the whole kitchen. If we want a coffee in bed we have a GSI hand grinder and an Aeropress. The simplicity has made cooking more enjoyable, not less.

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Recovery Gear

Max-Trax boards: yes, two of them, always. They have pulled us out of sand in the Sahara and mud in the DRC and they live bolted to the rear door where they are accessible in 30 seconds without unpacking the vehicle.

Winch: a Warn VR EVO 10-S mounted to a hidden winch plate. Not optional if you're doing serious off-road. A soft shackle and a snatch strap are recovery aids, not recovery systems. A winch changes the physics of the situation when there is no other vehicle, no trees, no assistance for 80 km. We used ours four times on the Africa run and once in the Ecuadorian Andes. Each time it was the difference between a half-hour recovery and a two-day wait.

We also carry: a high-lift jack with a base plate, a full-size spare, a puncture repair kit for tubeless tyres, jumper cables, and a basic engine consumables kit (oil, coolant, belts, fuses, hose clamps, electrical tape). We do not carry a second spare. We've had three punctures in six years. We've never needed two spares simultaneously.

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Paperwork: The Carnet de Passage en Douane

This is the document that most people don't know about until they're denied entry at a border. A Carnet de Passage en Douane (CPD) is a customs document that guarantees you'll take your vehicle back out of a country rather than selling it duty-free. It is required for a significant number of African and South American countries. You can get full up-to-date country requirement information from the IRU, which administers the document internationally.

In Australia, the issuing body is the NRMA or state-equivalent motoring clubs, coordinated through The AA Australia. The process: you apply, they assess your vehicle's value, and you either pay a cash deposit (typically 150–200% of vehicle value for high-risk countries) or secure an insurance-backed bond. For our Troopy, valued at AUD $55,000, the bond-backed carnet cost us approximately AUD $1,100 per year in insurance fees. Without it, we would not have entered Egypt, Ethiopia, or Bolivia without a significant cash bond left at the border. Budget for it. Apply at least three months before departure.

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Shipping: RoRo Versus Container

We've done both. We shipped the Troopy from Genoa to Cape Town on a RoRo (Roll-on Roll-off) and from Dakar to Montevideo in a shared container.

RoRo is cheaper (roughly AUD $1,800–2,400 port to port) and simpler logistically, but the vehicle is accessible to handlers and you will arrive with things missing from inside it. Nothing catastrophic for us — a Leatherman, some cable, a bottle of wine — but strip the car of valuables and don't leave anything loose.

Container cost us AUD $3,200 for a shared 40-foot from Dakar, but the vehicle arrived exactly as we left it, we could load it with gear, and we had genuine peace of mind. If you're carrying sensitive or expensive equipment, pay the premium.

Both times, we used a local freight forwarder at the origin port — not a global broker. They charge more than they quote, but they know the specific port's system and save you days of confusion.

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Borders and Petite Corruption

We're going to say this plainly because most overlanding content won't: in West Africa particularly, low-level corruption at police checkpoints is common and is mostly manageable. Officers ask for your documents, find a minor "problem" — expired something, a sticker, anything — and suggest a fine that can be paid on the spot. The fine goes in a pocket, not a receipt book.

Our approach: be calm, be patient, never be rude, always have your documents in order, and carry small-denomination local currency. We rarely paid more than the equivalent of AUD $5–10 per incident. We never paid anything in East Africa or South America in a similar context. The experience varies enormously by country and by day. See our Africa destinations guide for country-by-country notes.

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Insurance

Third-party vehicle insurance in Africa is bought per country at the border, usually from a booth right there. Quality varies. In Southern and East Africa, the COMESA Yellow Card covers multiple countries in one policy and is worth buying upfront.

For South America, we used TVHA Italy for vehicle insurance and personal travel cover through Tourinsure (Australia-based, covers overlanding activities). Neither was cheap. Neither was optional. We also recommend checking community resources like Overland Bound for current member recommendations on insurance, as products and regional availability change regularly.

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Budgeting Honestly

For two people, with a paid-off vehicle, no major mechanical failures, camping predominantly, eating locally, and crossing around three to four new countries per month: AUD $4,000–7,000 per month. The lower end is achievable in lower-cost regions (East Africa, rural South America). The upper end reflects shipping months, carnet costs amortised, West African fuel prices, and the inevitable "we haven't showered in eight days and we're paying for a guesthouse" moments. Don't budget AUD $2,500 and expect it to work. It won't. See our notes on South America destinations for a regional cost breakdown.

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Six Things We'd Tell Our Past Selves

1. The vehicle matters less than your mechanical knowledge. Learn to change your own wheel bearings before you leave. 2. Ship less food from home. Markets in every country sell food. Cooking local is cheaper, better, and actually the point. 3. Your first border crossing will take four hours and feel catastrophic. By your fifteenth, it'll take forty minutes and feel like admin. 4. Don't buy a winch from a brand you can't source parts for in Africa. Warn is everywhere. Others are not. 5. Wild camping is usually fine and occasionally sketchy. Trust your gut faster than you think you should. 6. The trip doesn't start when you arrive. It started the day you committed. Stop planning and go. We spent a full year "getting ready" and we were no more prepared at month twelve than we were at month six. Check the Cape Town travel guide for your first week's orientation — it helped us more than any overland forum.